1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a camera control system, and more particularly to a system suitably applicable to video data communication processing systems, such as video conference systems and video surveillance systems, which remotely use moving image data inputted from a camera and processed in a digital processing unit.
2. Description of Related Art
So far, in the fields including video conference systems and surveillance camera systems, their systems are made up of a camera and a user terminal in which parameters or the like of the camera are controllable through a network from a distance, and are composed such that the user remotely controls the camera for receiving and displaying images picked up thereby. Further, as the camera, there has been employed a camera with a panhead which allows variation of the image pickup direction.
This panhead-mounted camera has employed a method of using a dedicated controller and of controlling the horizontal (rightward and leftward) panning and the vertical (upward and downward) tilting of the camera with a button or a joy stick of the controller. Further, in recent years, a dedicated controller has been displayed on a displaying unit of a computer in a pseudo manner through the use of a GUI or the like and controlled through a mouse or the like.
In addition, many surveillance cameras, being equipped with a panhead, are composed such that the panhead is controlled to take predetermined movements to monitor images of some places predetermined.
However, in the case of these conventional systems, video images transmitted are only video images of a subject actually picked up by a panhead-mounted camera at some points of time, with the result that it is impossible to view the situations around the subject and further to beforehand know, by intuition, video images to be picked up after movements of the panhead. For this reason, in order to pick up an image at a desired position, there is a need to correct frequently the position of the panhead while viewing the video images transmitted.
Meanwhile, when a cameraman takes a photograph with a camera in a photographing site, the cameraman looks through a viewfinder of the camera with his one eye, while observing the periphery with the other eye, so that the camera can be set at an angle for the next photographing on the moment. This is due to the fact that the cameraman sees some periphery to be further photographed concurrently with seeing an image within the viewfinder for the actual photographing.
Thus, in the video conference systems or the remote surveillance systems, in the case of interactively implementing the posture control for a remote camera with a panhead while viewing a video image, if the panhead is controlled while the images of all the areas to be sensed by movements of the camera are seen, the user feels as if the cameraman controls the image-pickup range with a camera in that site, which facilitates its manipulations.
In a method taken so far therefor, first of all, a camera is moved to pick up all the image-pickup areas, and, further, all the obtained images are processed into one image. Then, the user controls the image pickup direction and the zoom of the camera while seeing a still image which is the thus-obtained one image.
However, the image of the entire area produced by such image processing is a still image but not a video image to be obtained in real time. Therefore, a problem arises in that difficulty is encountered to deal sufficiently with the cases that there is an extreme need to set the camera at a desired angle momentarily, such as the case that a camera is to be pointed at a participant asking to speak in a video conference and the case that the camera is to be pointed at a trespasser appearing suddenly in remote surveillance.